More and more, consumers are turning to apps that provide a multitude of functions and away from apps that each provide a single purpose, according to a new Gartner survey cited by Mobile World Live.

This is leading to developers integrating an array of features into just a handful of apps, which users are spending an increasing amount of time in. By the end of 2016, just 33% of 3,000 survey respondents from the US, UK, and China used six to 10 apps each month, marking a 6% decrease from the prior year. This shift in consumer behavior is resulting in a "post-app" era, which could radically morph the way consumers access the internet and services.

Facebook's dominance among the most used apps, as well as the increasing functionality it's adding to its properties, puts it in a solid position to come out on top in this new market. The company is taking the lion's share of app usage across its three biggest apps — Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger — which each boast more than 1 billion monthly active users. For example, 81% of respondents in the US and UK said they use Messenger, while 61% of users use WhatsApp, Gartner notes.

Facebook is likely attempting to replicate the success of Chinese chat app WeChat in the western market. WeChat accounts for 95% of app usage in China, according to Gartner. That's because the chat app gives users the ability to do much more than just chat and make calls; it provides a platform for ordering cars, shopping online, booking doctors' appointments, and more. WeChat is so successful that it accounts for around 30% of all time spent on the mobile internet in China, notes The Economist. This is where Facebook wants to be.

Both Apple and Google have taken notice and are actively striving to shore up their platforms against Facebook's threat. While the Android and iOS platforms can't reach everyone, Facebook's platform-agnostic approach can and does. And, while the diverse number of messaging apps competing for the western mobile market makes it unlikely that Facebook will be able to fully replicate WeChat's success in China, the company's rampant global growth and increasing control of time spent on the internet is likely still a daunting rival and could be a partial driver for the recent moves being made by Google and Apple.

Google is doubling down on multiple fronts. The company is actively canvassing the global telecom space as it works to increase adoption of RCS, an iMessage-like native app that could rival Messenger and WhatsApp. Google is also making improvements to the mobile web experience and blurring the lines between the mobile web and apps.

Apple is enhancing the functionality of Siri and iMessage. Apple has been adding an increasing number of features to its native messaging app to improve engagement rates, which could bump up revenue. For example, last year, Apple opened iMessage to developers, allowing them to create stripped-down apps, such as games, that could be used from within iMessage.

Mobile-app makers and content creators are vying for consumer attention in a crowded and noisy market.

Even if an app can stand out enough to prompt a consumer to download it from among a list of millions, it then faces the challenge of enticing him or her to use it enough times to recuperate development, maintenance, and marketing costs. To make matters worse, those marketing costs have hit record-high levels over the past year as discoverability has become more challenging.

And while consumers are spending more time in apps, most of that time is spent in a few favorites. Consumers spend almost three-quarters of their total smartphone app time in just their three favorite apps, according to comScore.

But it's not all doom and gloom: There are numerous tools at a publisher's disposal to engage and re-engage consumers, and there are new products and solutions coming to market that can help alleviate some of the issues around this app engagement crisis.

Jessica Smith, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on app engagement that explores the current state of the app market, the issues around engaging consumers, and the tools at a publisher's disposal. It also identifies best practices for the implementation of some app engagement tools, and presents the pitfalls that some publishers fall into in this pursuit.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

The app market today is challenging and volatile. It's difficult to stand out, and most apps have to be offered for free in order to entice consumers who have too much supply to choose from. This puts greater emphasis on engaging consumers after they've downloaded an app in order to recoup costs.

Consumers are more difficult to engage today, as most have dozens of apps installed on their devices yet spend most of their time in just a select handful of favorites.

There are numerous solutions at hand for mobile app publishers and content creators seeking to engage consumers. Push notifications, in-app messaging, and app message centers with badges are three tools publishers can use to engage consumers.

While many publishers mistakenly rely solely on push notifications for app engagements, this is a poor practice because many consumers don't allow push notifications and those that do can easily be overwhelmed when they receive too many.

The best solution often includes leveraging two or three of these tools to engage consumers with the right message at the right time. The technology in this market has grown increasingly sophisticated, and publishers that don't diversify their approach run the risk of annoying their consumers to the point of abandonment.

There are emerging engagement technologies that will change the current app engagement norms and present new ways for app publishers to communicate with users. The mobile ecosystem is changing quickly as technology improves and consumers become more comfortable conducting more activities on mobile devices.

In full, the report:

Identifies the major challenges in today's app market and explains why employing good app engagement practices is more important than ever before.

Presents the major app engagement tools currently available.

Examines the pros and cons of each app engagement tool while outlining some pitfalls that publishers encounter in implementing them.

Prescribes best practices for adopting various app engagement tools or strategies.

Assesses how the market will likely change over the next five years as emerging technologies change both consumer behavior with mobile devices and introduce new tools with which to engage consumers.

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